“Love will keep us together”
Acts 17:16-34 / John 14:15-21
Easter 6A
29 May 2011
“Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.”
Fifteen hundred years before Martin Luther wrote those words in his Large Catechism, Paul was surely thinking them as he roamed the streets of Athens, waiting for his friend Silas and Timothy to arrive.
Athens wasn’t the center of the world – that honor now belonged to Rome – but it was the “second city” and the gateway to the Roman Empire’s eastern possessions. It also was the home of the great philosophical movements of the time … different ideas about how to live in the world. And then there was all that history, bearing testimony to the time two hundred years earlier when Greece was the great military and political power.
And so it was into this scene that Paul entered, the apostle to the Gentiles in one of the biggest cities of the Gentile world at the time … and he was fumin’ mad.
Because, besides all that history and philosophy and politics, there was a lot of religion going on in Athens. But none of it was the kind Paul was proclaiming and living.
There were temples and shrines to the great Greek gods, the ones you can still read about in books like “The Odyssey” and “The Adventures of Hercules.” There were temples and shrines to the Roman gods, like Jupiter and Venus. And there were temples and shrines to the gods of the other nations of the Roman Empire … Artemis of the Ephesians; Ra of the Egyptians … as well as synagogues for the city’s many Jews.
But there was nothing … no shrine, no temple, not even a statue erected to the one God Paul knew personally … Jesus Christ, the One who had appeared to Paul and changed his life forever – who told Paul that his mission was to go to places like Athens and speak his name to the people there.
Paul knew he had his work cut out for him there in Athens. There was lots of religion around …temples and statues and shrines on every street corner … but none of these proclaimed God’s truth as Paul knew it to be. There was no church in Athens. Paul was probably the only Christian for miles.
So what did he do?
Did he carry things out in the way much of the evangelism in the world happens today … the three “C”s … confront, convict, and convert? That’s what many Christians believe they need to do in a world, a place and time, a part of the country that looks a lot like Paul’s Athens – not very Christian.
First, confront people and tell them how wrong they are.
Then, convict them by quoting Bible passage after Bible passage, telling them how much they’ve sinned, and that if they don’t accept Jesus as their savior, they’ll burn in hell for eternity.
And then, finally, convert them – bring them to Christ, by force, if necessary.
That’s evangelism for many, many people … many, many churches, in the past right up to today. And lots of people still think that way; some, maybe even our friends and neighbors.
But it’s not the way Paul chose to work in Athens.
So what did he do there? And how might it be helpful to us as we search for ways to share the story of Jesus with others?
Well, first of all, notice where Paul went. Yes, he did go to the synagogue … his own people, the Jews … but he also went to the marketplace, the civic center of Athens, the place where people came and bought and sold and visited with one another, telling stories and sharing the latest news.
Paul didn’t restrict himself to life with like-minded people. He deliberately went out and engaged others who were different from him.
So the first helpful note for us is … if you want to tell people about Jesus, don’t just hang around other Christians. Go to the places where you’ll meet and be with people who are different than you. Understand what’s happening in the popular culture. Be able to speak the language of people today. Christianity was never meant to be a separatist society, breaking off like a cult to be removed from the rest of the world. Christians are called to be engaged in conversation and life with other people, whether they are Christian or not.
Now for our second point, we’ll have to correct the English translation of a couple of words. Paul is said to be “arguing” with the Jews in the synagogue and with the people in the marketplace, and “debating” with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers – more about those names in a minute.
But in the original Greek language of Acts, what Paul was doing here is simply engaging in dialog … conversing, conferring, presenting his case. He’s not attacking these people for their unbelief, confronting them for what he sees as wrong religion. He’s not ridiculing them for what they believe or don’t believe.
The practice of the time among learned people was to engage in what was called “Socratic discourse,” named after Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher. We might think of a round table or panel discussion on an issue – not a debate or an argument, but a calm dialogue about issues.
And that is what Paul was doing in Athens … engaging them, where they were, approaching them in a friendly manner or being approached himself and asked to discuss what he believed in … his religion, his philosophy of life.
And there were many different, competing philosophies in that Athens marketplace. Among them, Epicureanism … always searching for happiness and ease of life, and avoiding pain and suffering at all costs. And Stoicism … kind of the opposite of Epicureanism; being indifferent to pain and suffering; “taking it like a man” but also not being moved by the suffering of others; being passionless and emotionally solid, like a rock.
These two competing philosophies were so far from what Paul believed, and what Jesus taught and lived, it would have been quite easy for Paul to just lash out at the Athenians, to curse or make fun of them. But he didn’t. He respected their differences as he discussed what he believed.
And that brings us to another point. Paul didn’t assume that the Athenians were not spiritual or religious just because they believed differently than he did. Far from it! Hear how he starts his speech: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” Just because those Athenians weren’t Christians, didn’t mean they weren’t interested in religion or spirituality.
And this applies particularly to us here in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, on any given weekend, only about 7% of us are engaged in a worship experience. But the majority of us … our friends and neighbors, our family members who don’t worship, who aren’t part of a faith community … still consider themselves to be religious, to be spiritual.
If you don’t believe this, well, what do you think that the primary topic of interest were at the local Starbucks … the bar … the gym, over the past month? May 21 … the Rapture … the end of the world.
So for us, we need to take a cue here from Paul as well. We can’t assume that our neighbor, our friend, our family member who doesn’t worship has no interest or knowledge in things spiritual. Because we would most likely be wrong.
People are in a tender space these days. Unemployment, high prices, economic uncertainty, political uncertainty … people are raw and hurting. They are looking for truth. And you may be the only person they meet who has had an encounter with a loving, accepting, forgiving, renewing faith community in the past week – you may be the only one who can bring them Jesus.
So will you? Will we? In words, in actions, thoughts and feelings that are real and authentic, reflecting, bearing the love of the One who brings us and keeps us together, a love that they can get, they can connect with, that they can take into their very selves?
This is what Paul did with those Athenians, after all. But maybe we’re looking for more help here, with what to say. After all, we’re Lutherans … speaking publicly about our faith is something new and perhaps … no, probably … uncomfortable for us.
So what did Paul actually say to these Athenians … what was his main point, what he was trying to convince them of, what he was “selling” them?
Was it … tradition? Systematic theology? Doctrine and dogma? Worship forms and styles? Hymnals and albs?
Nope.
It was the one thing, the one point that is the heart of the Word about Jesus.
The Resurrection.
The one, unique aspect of being a believer in Jesus Christ is not the tradition, the hymns, the buildings, the institution of the church … none of that … BUT THAT GOD BECAME A MAN, HE LIVED OUR LIFE, HE DIED OUR DEATH, AND HE ROSE AGAIN … DEATH NO LONGER HAS POWER OVER US.
Ouch. That one hurts.
Because, what do we usually say when conversation with another rolls around to matters of faith?
WE TELL THEM ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE OTHER THAN JESUS.
We talk about our beautiful buildings … our lovely worship services … our nice pastor.
These all may be good topics for conversation.
But none of these are central to our faith.
Only the Resurrection can claim that spot.
And Paul’s speech to the Athenians does exactly that. He uses quotes from their poets and philosophers. He points out their altar to what they called in Greek “Agnosto Theo” – the unknown god – it was something the Athenians had put up just to cover their bases, to make sure that they honored all the gods, even the ones they didn’t know about yet.
But the main point of his speech is right there in his final words – “Of this he has given assurance to all by raising him” – Jesus – “from the dead.”
The Athenians didn’t know about Jesus – they were AGNOSTICS because they only guessed about Agnosto Theo – the unknown God.
But Paul did know Jesus.
And you know Jesus.
As he says in the Gospel reading, you know him.
Like Paul, you and I have been given the Spirit of truth, in our baptism, in this meal we’ll soon share, in these times of worship together.
We know Jesus. We know him in the very fibre of our being … how he came to earth as one of us, lived our lives as one of us, suffered our lot in life, died our death, but rose again to put death to death forever.
We know Jesus. Here we have seen, and touched him. Felt his splash of grace on our foreheads. Held him close in the welcoming embrace of another. Tasted the goodness of his love in his meal of welcome, forgiveness, new life, and strengthening for service.
And so, like Paul, you and I have no choice but to search out those Athenians and speak about him. Maybe not on the hill of the Areopagus in Athens, Greece … but certainly on this hill and others … Fairwood and Renton and Kent. In Seattle and Tacoma and Tukwila and Bellevue. Anywhere where we encounter those who don’t know Jesus.
Yes, some will scoff and walk away. Others will want to hear more. And still others will join us and become believers.
Everywhere we go, there are empty places …empty hearts … waiting for someone to tell them who is the Unknown God.
You know him.
He abides with you.
He will be in you and with you always.
And the One who has been with you and in you will continue to be with you as you go into the world of the Athenians, to meet them on common ground, and tell them about this One who rose from the dead. For you and me, and them.
For us. Amen.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
22 May 2011
“Love is stronger than death”
John 14:1-14
5 Easter A
22 May 2011
Our Gospel text for today is, in some ways, a curious choice for the 5th Sunday of Easter. In the midst of this season of celebration of resurrection and new life, these are words we most closely associate with … death.
Many different images come to my mind when I hear these very familiar words … perhaps you, too, hear them in the King James English with its rich poetry … “In my Father’s house there are many mansions …”
… many rooms … many dwelling places ...
I remember the time, back in the 1980s, when I toured the world headquarters of a rather prominent religious organization based in Salt Lake City … on the wall in the visitor center, there was a wall of illustrations … depicting this scene which Jesus describes … the “many rooms” where he is going.
I had no idea heaven was furnished in Duncan Phyfe.
What about those of us who like Scandinavian Modern from IKEA???
But more often … these words remind me of the many, many funerals I’ve led and attended … the funeral home services to which I’d be called in Maryland, to perform a ritual for a family who had no religious community connection … the big church-filling funerals in rural Minnesota … each of them, having as a scripture reading, these verses from our Gospel reading today …
“… Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me … I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am there you may be also … Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
This is the way any number of us usually hear these verses … on a day of grief and sorrow, surrounded by a sad-sounding church organ playing “What a friend we have in Jesus” and “How great Thou art” … these verses, the Acme Lutheran Standard Scripture reading for funerals and related occasions (yes, they are listed that way in the pastor’s manual), chosen because they are to give both assurance and admonition to those in attendance on those days:
… assurance … don’t worry, all is well, your loved one is with Jesus in heaven right now because they were baptized and they believed in Jesus …
… and admonition … It says right there, no one goes to Our Father in heaven who doesn’t believe in him, so you had better believe and shape up, you heathen, or else you’ll never see your dear departed loved ones ever again.
It’s little wonder that one clergy friend of mine calls these verses “the most exclusive in the Bible.” When they are used that way, they surely are. Words used to kill healthy living human emotion (stop crying, grandma’s in heaven) – words used to kill relationship (One Way – Jesus, or else) – words only to be rolled out when there’s been a death.
And yet … this old chestnut of a text, it still has a lot of life in it. Much luster and gleam, if we but rub off the accretions of our sin and selfishness, that’s we’ve put onto it.
First of all, note the context of these words. It is a time approaching death … Jesus is speaking these words as the disciples are gathered together with him after sharing the Passover meal. Judas has just left them “to do quickly what he is going to do.”
The disciples are confused … questioning … wondering … worried. What’s coming? What’s going to happen?
So rub the tarnish off the very first verse.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
Do you remember that song, “Bridge over Troubled Water?” That’s the sense Jesus is using here. When he says “troubled” in John’s gospel, it’s the same meaning as when waters get disturbed … in a lake, a pond, a pool. Standing on the side, the shore, you get splashed, you are unsure if you should put your boat in … there’s a small craft advisory.
Certainly this was how the disciples were feeling there, with Jesus, on that night before his death. Troubled, unsure … unsafe waters ahead.
And so Jesus’ responds to their “troubled waters” … not with a hammer over the head “BELIEVE OR ELSE” … but with an invitation … to believe in, literally, to believe into him.
Believing into Jesus on this night when he was betrayed … that surely couldn’t be a one-shot, now or never, do or die affair.
It’s a process … an all-consuming business for the disciples which … Jesus knew … began back when he first called them to join him … continued through all the signs he did … turning the water into wine, healing the man born blind, and raising Lazarus from the dead … and which would next lead them to the cross and tomb.
That’s the way of which Jesus is speaking. Not a literal road, but the Way of the Cross, which he had been on ever since his ministry began.
The disciples surely knew this, didn’t they? They’d been on this way with Jesus for years, together.
So Jesus could say in truth, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
But it’s Thomas … yes, the same one who needs physical proof of Jesus resurrected a few chapters later … it’s Thomas who interprets “way” literally, like a road on a map.
So Jesus needs to set Thomas … and the others … straight.
The Way isn’t one which can be plotted on a map.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The Israelites had been coming to God for centuries, through faith like Abraham’s, through experiencing the divine presence on Mt. Sinai like Moses and Elijah, through God’s presence in the holy of holies in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Here, though, Jesus was offering something different. The close, yes, personal relationship of Father and child like Jesus had, has, can only be entered into through Jesus.
And that word “through” … for that place and time, as close as they were to the events of the Cross … “through” for Jesus must have had painful irony, as he knew the only way he could achieve all this for the disciples, was to be pierced himself … “through” him with nails and spear … this would be the only way he could deliver what he promised … all that he lays out in the subsequent verses … the explanation to Philip … the explication here of what he has just said, earlier … it all will come “through” Jesus, though his death on the Cross, through his being raised again … through “the believing into” him which the disciples will be doing … once they encounter him in the garden that first Easter morning … on the road to Emmaus, in his sharing the bread with them … in his appearing to them and telling them, “peace be with you.”
And that “believing into” Jesus, it continues this day, even for us.
For our hearts, they are troubled too, just as Jesus saw the disciples were that night before he was betrayed.
We, like them, may be unsure of the days ahead … wondering, hoping, praying, “Does God really care for me … for us?’
We’d like that close, personal relationship Jesus had with his Father, too … that assurance that God is really and truly with us.
We would like that good word for our friends, our loved ones, too, that God is really and truly with us.
And so the Good News here, in this good word for us, is that through Jesus, through Jesus, all this comes to us.
Through Jesus. It’s not an exclusive word.
Through Jesus means, the Way of the Cross. Through Jesus … he calls us into his way, his truth, his life, walking the Way of the Cross with Jesus, living for others, sharing this life in all its rejoicings and yes, its pains and sorrows too, sharing with others. Through Jesus, in this Way, he is with us.
Through Jesus means, that through Jesus, we see, we feel, we touch and taste, the Father for us. The bishop sometimes jokes, who has the most authority in the Northwest Washington Synod office? Margaret, his secretary, because you have to go through Margaret to get to the bishop … to set an appointment, to get on his calendar.
In the same way also, we go through Jesus to “get to” the Father.
What Jesus says, goes.
As Jesus said in last week’s Gospel reading, “I am the gate.” We go through Jesus, through Jesus, to get to the Father, to get to life.
Now this is a freeing word!
Freeing, because we aren’t the gate.
We don’t decide who gets in.
Peter Rollins is a northern Irish poet-philosopher-theologian. His friends and colleagues are people such as Rob Bell and Jay Bakker – yes, that Jay Bakker, the son of the former televangelists Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker … they are all part of the “emergent” church movement that is breaking down barriers and trying to undo the damage that the fence-and-wall building thieves and bandits have been doing to the church for the past twenty or so years.
You know who they are, these thieves and bandits.
The ones who keep “troubling up the waters” for us, troubling up more suspicion and doubt among us.
Peter tells a parable – which you can go on YouTube and hear for yourself, just type in the key words “I deny the resurrection” – yes, you heard me right, “I deny the resurrection” – Peter Rollins … the parable goes like this:
A friend named Phil, on leaving church, dreamt that he had died and gone to heaven. And when he got there, St. Peter said, “Hello, it’s great to see you, Phil, welcome, come on in.” And the gates of heaven were opened.
But then Phil looked around, and he saw his friends on the outside … the ones who weren’t Christian … and he asked St. Peter, “what about them?”
St. Peter said, “sorry, Phil, you know the rules.”
So Phil thought of his reference point. He thought of Jesus the outsider. Jesus the friend of sinners. Jesus, the one who would stay with the oppressed.
And Phil decided, and said to St. Peter, “um, I think I’ll stay outside, here, with my friends.”
And St. Peter smiled, and said, “Ah, at last, you understand.”
And then on the video Peter Rollins goes on. “Someone asked me once if I deny the resurrection.” And I said, “yes, yes, I do … I deny the resurrection EVERY TIME I do not serve my neighbor … EVERY TIME I do not help the poor …. But I affirm the resurrection every now and again when I stand up for those on their knees, and I weep for people who have no more tears to shed.”
It’s in moments like those … when we go THROUGH Jesus … his word, his Way of the Cross … that we touch the Father. And we “get” faith. And we experience the Kingdom of Heaven … not just then, not just some far off place and time … but right here, right now.
THROUGH Jesus … we live like every day is our last day on earth … and our first. THROUGH Jesus … we are assured that the Father is with us in all that we do. THROUGH Jesus … we don’t put up more and more fences between us and others … but we point toward the gate … the gate who is Jesus … and HE who is the way, and the truth, and the life. And THROUGH Jesus … we receive the promise that he will go and come again and take us to himself … NOT on a day of our choosing and NOT on a day of someone else’s choosing … a fence builder’s day … a thief and bandit’s day … no, but on the day of HIS choosing, when all we need to know, and hear, is that it is THROUGH Jesus that we do have and we will have forgiveness, life, and a place to remain, with him and his Father, forever.
Amen.
John 14:1-14
5 Easter A
22 May 2011
Our Gospel text for today is, in some ways, a curious choice for the 5th Sunday of Easter. In the midst of this season of celebration of resurrection and new life, these are words we most closely associate with … death.
Many different images come to my mind when I hear these very familiar words … perhaps you, too, hear them in the King James English with its rich poetry … “In my Father’s house there are many mansions …”
… many rooms … many dwelling places ...
I remember the time, back in the 1980s, when I toured the world headquarters of a rather prominent religious organization based in Salt Lake City … on the wall in the visitor center, there was a wall of illustrations … depicting this scene which Jesus describes … the “many rooms” where he is going.
I had no idea heaven was furnished in Duncan Phyfe.
What about those of us who like Scandinavian Modern from IKEA???
But more often … these words remind me of the many, many funerals I’ve led and attended … the funeral home services to which I’d be called in Maryland, to perform a ritual for a family who had no religious community connection … the big church-filling funerals in rural Minnesota … each of them, having as a scripture reading, these verses from our Gospel reading today …
“… Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me … I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am there you may be also … Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
This is the way any number of us usually hear these verses … on a day of grief and sorrow, surrounded by a sad-sounding church organ playing “What a friend we have in Jesus” and “How great Thou art” … these verses, the Acme Lutheran Standard Scripture reading for funerals and related occasions (yes, they are listed that way in the pastor’s manual), chosen because they are to give both assurance and admonition to those in attendance on those days:
… assurance … don’t worry, all is well, your loved one is with Jesus in heaven right now because they were baptized and they believed in Jesus …
… and admonition … It says right there, no one goes to Our Father in heaven who doesn’t believe in him, so you had better believe and shape up, you heathen, or else you’ll never see your dear departed loved ones ever again.
It’s little wonder that one clergy friend of mine calls these verses “the most exclusive in the Bible.” When they are used that way, they surely are. Words used to kill healthy living human emotion (stop crying, grandma’s in heaven) – words used to kill relationship (One Way – Jesus, or else) – words only to be rolled out when there’s been a death.
And yet … this old chestnut of a text, it still has a lot of life in it. Much luster and gleam, if we but rub off the accretions of our sin and selfishness, that’s we’ve put onto it.
First of all, note the context of these words. It is a time approaching death … Jesus is speaking these words as the disciples are gathered together with him after sharing the Passover meal. Judas has just left them “to do quickly what he is going to do.”
The disciples are confused … questioning … wondering … worried. What’s coming? What’s going to happen?
So rub the tarnish off the very first verse.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
Do you remember that song, “Bridge over Troubled Water?” That’s the sense Jesus is using here. When he says “troubled” in John’s gospel, it’s the same meaning as when waters get disturbed … in a lake, a pond, a pool. Standing on the side, the shore, you get splashed, you are unsure if you should put your boat in … there’s a small craft advisory.
Certainly this was how the disciples were feeling there, with Jesus, on that night before his death. Troubled, unsure … unsafe waters ahead.
And so Jesus’ responds to their “troubled waters” … not with a hammer over the head “BELIEVE OR ELSE” … but with an invitation … to believe in, literally, to believe into him.
Believing into Jesus on this night when he was betrayed … that surely couldn’t be a one-shot, now or never, do or die affair.
It’s a process … an all-consuming business for the disciples which … Jesus knew … began back when he first called them to join him … continued through all the signs he did … turning the water into wine, healing the man born blind, and raising Lazarus from the dead … and which would next lead them to the cross and tomb.
That’s the way of which Jesus is speaking. Not a literal road, but the Way of the Cross, which he had been on ever since his ministry began.
The disciples surely knew this, didn’t they? They’d been on this way with Jesus for years, together.
So Jesus could say in truth, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
But it’s Thomas … yes, the same one who needs physical proof of Jesus resurrected a few chapters later … it’s Thomas who interprets “way” literally, like a road on a map.
So Jesus needs to set Thomas … and the others … straight.
The Way isn’t one which can be plotted on a map.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The Israelites had been coming to God for centuries, through faith like Abraham’s, through experiencing the divine presence on Mt. Sinai like Moses and Elijah, through God’s presence in the holy of holies in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Here, though, Jesus was offering something different. The close, yes, personal relationship of Father and child like Jesus had, has, can only be entered into through Jesus.
And that word “through” … for that place and time, as close as they were to the events of the Cross … “through” for Jesus must have had painful irony, as he knew the only way he could achieve all this for the disciples, was to be pierced himself … “through” him with nails and spear … this would be the only way he could deliver what he promised … all that he lays out in the subsequent verses … the explanation to Philip … the explication here of what he has just said, earlier … it all will come “through” Jesus, though his death on the Cross, through his being raised again … through “the believing into” him which the disciples will be doing … once they encounter him in the garden that first Easter morning … on the road to Emmaus, in his sharing the bread with them … in his appearing to them and telling them, “peace be with you.”
And that “believing into” Jesus, it continues this day, even for us.
For our hearts, they are troubled too, just as Jesus saw the disciples were that night before he was betrayed.
We, like them, may be unsure of the days ahead … wondering, hoping, praying, “Does God really care for me … for us?’
We’d like that close, personal relationship Jesus had with his Father, too … that assurance that God is really and truly with us.
We would like that good word for our friends, our loved ones, too, that God is really and truly with us.
And so the Good News here, in this good word for us, is that through Jesus, through Jesus, all this comes to us.
Through Jesus. It’s not an exclusive word.
Through Jesus means, the Way of the Cross. Through Jesus … he calls us into his way, his truth, his life, walking the Way of the Cross with Jesus, living for others, sharing this life in all its rejoicings and yes, its pains and sorrows too, sharing with others. Through Jesus, in this Way, he is with us.
Through Jesus means, that through Jesus, we see, we feel, we touch and taste, the Father for us. The bishop sometimes jokes, who has the most authority in the Northwest Washington Synod office? Margaret, his secretary, because you have to go through Margaret to get to the bishop … to set an appointment, to get on his calendar.
In the same way also, we go through Jesus to “get to” the Father.
What Jesus says, goes.
As Jesus said in last week’s Gospel reading, “I am the gate.” We go through Jesus, through Jesus, to get to the Father, to get to life.
Now this is a freeing word!
Freeing, because we aren’t the gate.
We don’t decide who gets in.
Peter Rollins is a northern Irish poet-philosopher-theologian. His friends and colleagues are people such as Rob Bell and Jay Bakker – yes, that Jay Bakker, the son of the former televangelists Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker … they are all part of the “emergent” church movement that is breaking down barriers and trying to undo the damage that the fence-and-wall building thieves and bandits have been doing to the church for the past twenty or so years.
You know who they are, these thieves and bandits.
The ones who keep “troubling up the waters” for us, troubling up more suspicion and doubt among us.
Peter tells a parable – which you can go on YouTube and hear for yourself, just type in the key words “I deny the resurrection” – yes, you heard me right, “I deny the resurrection” – Peter Rollins … the parable goes like this:
A friend named Phil, on leaving church, dreamt that he had died and gone to heaven. And when he got there, St. Peter said, “Hello, it’s great to see you, Phil, welcome, come on in.” And the gates of heaven were opened.
But then Phil looked around, and he saw his friends on the outside … the ones who weren’t Christian … and he asked St. Peter, “what about them?”
St. Peter said, “sorry, Phil, you know the rules.”
So Phil thought of his reference point. He thought of Jesus the outsider. Jesus the friend of sinners. Jesus, the one who would stay with the oppressed.
And Phil decided, and said to St. Peter, “um, I think I’ll stay outside, here, with my friends.”
And St. Peter smiled, and said, “Ah, at last, you understand.”
And then on the video Peter Rollins goes on. “Someone asked me once if I deny the resurrection.” And I said, “yes, yes, I do … I deny the resurrection EVERY TIME I do not serve my neighbor … EVERY TIME I do not help the poor …. But I affirm the resurrection every now and again when I stand up for those on their knees, and I weep for people who have no more tears to shed.”
It’s in moments like those … when we go THROUGH Jesus … his word, his Way of the Cross … that we touch the Father. And we “get” faith. And we experience the Kingdom of Heaven … not just then, not just some far off place and time … but right here, right now.
THROUGH Jesus … we live like every day is our last day on earth … and our first. THROUGH Jesus … we are assured that the Father is with us in all that we do. THROUGH Jesus … we don’t put up more and more fences between us and others … but we point toward the gate … the gate who is Jesus … and HE who is the way, and the truth, and the life. And THROUGH Jesus … we receive the promise that he will go and come again and take us to himself … NOT on a day of our choosing and NOT on a day of someone else’s choosing … a fence builder’s day … a thief and bandit’s day … no, but on the day of HIS choosing, when all we need to know, and hear, is that it is THROUGH Jesus that we do have and we will have forgiveness, life, and a place to remain, with him and his Father, forever.
Amen.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
15 May 2011
“Warm, cuddly love … sometimes”
4 Easter A
John 10:1-10 / Acts 2:44-47 / 1 Peter 2:19-25
15 May 2011
”Jesus used these figures of speech with them ... but they did not understand what he was saying.”
Forget they … we may not understand what Jesus is saying … with all these “figures” before us in today’s Gospel reading:
• Sheepfold
• Gate
• Thief and bandit
• Gatekeeper
• Shepherd
• Sheep
Yes, it’s once again the fourth Sunday in Easter … annually known as “Good Shepherd” Sunday … much beloved by worshippers but received with, well, less than enthusiasm by most preachers I know.
What can one possibly say new and different about sheep, for the seventeenth time in a row, anyway?
But this year’s offering of Gospel text provides us with more than the usual warm fuzziness … while also bringing some treacherous footing for both preacher and hearers.
Jesus is painting a multi-layered, many faceted word picture in these ten short verses of John’s gospel. For concrete thinkers … Biblical literalists … these verses can be nightmarish.
Jesus is a shepherd.
No, no, he’s the gate.
So then, who’s the shepherd? Is Jesus the gatekeeper?
Who are those thieves and bandits?
And what about the sheep?
Baaaaaaa!
Jesus’ words to his disciples here in chapter 10 come right after chapter 9’s drama surrounding the man born blind … if you were in worship on the fourth Sunday in Lent, you heard this story … if not, I recommend chapter 9 to you for reading, a salvation play of several short acts, all contained in one chapter of John’s gospel.
Jesus heals a blind man, and as that man grows in faith, “seeing Jesus” clearer and clearer … those around him … the religious leaders of the day, the crowds, even the man’s parents … they grow increasingly “blind” to God’s truth, God’s reality of goodness, mercy and grace in Jesus, even as he’s standing right before them.
And so, as we continue over into chapter 10, and try to understand the “figures” in which Jesus is speaking … well, if we’ve been paying attention in chapter 9, the answer to one of our questions, “who are those thieves and bandits,” well, Jesus makes this perfectly clear for us.
The thieves and bandits, they are those who, when it comes to matters of faith, stubbornly cling to their own wrong-headed ways … those who feel they must mold and shape God over into their own image of what God is to be like … those who refuse to hear the call of God’s Spirit, through Jesus, to surrender, to lay down their own sin and selfishness … those who must micromanage and control every aspect of faith, God, church, belief, so that it all goes their way, filling their wants, their needs, their desires, their always having to be in the spotlight, in charge, number one, getting their way …
Those are the thieves and bandits, Jesus says. The ones who end up with their pants ripped on the fence, ripped and torn from climbing over, trying to get in, trying to get to the sheep in the wrong way.
Thieves and bandits. Robbers of the pure, sweet word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone, robbing that word from those who would faithfully hear and follow it.
Thieves and bandits.
They will always be in your midst, Jesus says. So pay attention, be on guard, and don’t be afraid to call them as you see them … keep them in their place … keep them from harming the flock.
Keep them from harming the flock. In that story of the man born blind, the religious leaders tried to put a stranglehold on religious faith. The blind man, now healed of his blindness a chapter earlier … his own parents refused to believe him for fear that, if they did, they might be put out of the synagogue. They had Jesus right there before them … and yet, they were blind to the light and truth of God … even as their son, now healed, now under attack by those “thieves and bandits” … even as he, disowned by his parents … he saw clearly.
Jesus saw that his flock … his flock of poor, defenseless sheep-people – they were at risk of being carried off by the thieves and bandits – those who wanted to remove them from the place of faith and hope, peace and new life … and so he started to “speak in figures” to his disciples about this threat .
Through those figures, Jesus puts himself in a few different places in this story.
Yes, he is the shepherd of the sheep – that warm, fuzzy, familiar image we hold dear on Good Shepherd Sunday, as we hear and read and sing the words of the beloved 23rd Psalm, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”
But Jesus also says he is the gate for the sheep.
And a gate … a gate means that there is a fence, too.
Now maybe we don’t like fences. Maybe to us, fences feel un-Christian … fencing off people from people. Fences … such as … you’re saved and you’re not; you’re going to hell, I’m going to heaven; you can come to the table of the Lord, but you can’t ... you can be a pastor in this church, but you can't.
Ah … but this fence … this gate … this is Jesus … not us … nor our human sin getting in the way of relationship between Jesus and us …
… and just as important … please note that the whole point of the fence, the sheepfold, the gate, the shepherd … this is all about the sheep being led out, to follow the shepherd.
The gate … Jesus … is the way the sheep are led out.
So much for warm cuddly fuzziness.
The whole point of having a shepherd, having a gate, having a sheepfold, being sheep … Jesus says … is not that they … we … get to stay in some soft, cushy, protected, “safe” place of comfort … no, but that we are led out by the voice of our shepherd … the voice of God, in Jesus Christ … leads out into the world.
“The sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
And so … just as Jesus placed himself in multiple places in this story … the shepherd, the gate … so there are multiple places for us as well … we who hear Jesus’ call to follow him.
Sometimes … yes … we are the sheep.
And sometimes … we are the gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper … the one who keeps the thieves and bandits from slipping in among the sheep, as they, we, follow Jesus out into the pasture of the world, to work, to proclaim, to serve.
Being a gatekeeper is an important job.
We have seen, and heard, and experienced what happens, when we let thieves and bandits in, to run with the sheep, to take over the flock, and proclaim their hate-filled message of fear and death … falsely stating that they are speaking for the Good Shepherd … when what they really are, are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The Good Shepherd needs good gatekeepers, too.
But how are we supposed to know when to open and close the gate? How do we know what’s “gate-worthy” behavior?
There’s where our two other New Testament readings come in.
There’s our reading from 1st Peter … words that are difficult … for they speak of the place of suffering in walking the way of Jesus.
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”
The Way of the Cross … the way of denying ourselves and living for others … it is not popular … indeed, thieves and bandits will do everything in their power to badmouth self-denial, giving and living to and for others, putting them first without regard for our own reward or place.
And yet … the Way of the Cross is most certainly “gateworthy” behavior for us. When we see it … when we encounter in, through the humble words and actions of those who have heard their Shepherd’s voice, his call to follow him … we can open the gates, open the gates of our hearts, open our arms in love and care for our neighbor, open our hands in loving service for the sake of those who most especially need us to live out the love and abundant life of the Good Shepherd, so they may have it in their hearts as well.
Then there’s our reading from Acts.
These words have taken substantial heat lately because, as some have said, “the liberals are using these words to try to prove to us that Jesus wants us all to be socialists.”
It sure does sound that way.
“All who believed … had all things in common … they would sell their possessions and good and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
But let’s cut to the chase here. Acts is not an instruction manual laying out actions for government programs … nor is the author recommending societal laws, to be mandated and enforced by executive fiat … no, what’s being described here is, the organic behavior of Spirit-led believers … in these verses coming immediately after the Pentecost story, God’s Spirit, having come upon these new Christians … that Spirit, God’s Spirit, is guiding them to give and share, voluntarily, willingly… as the Holy Spirit would lead and guide us, too.
These are verses pointing toward an idyllic community … “on earth as it is in heaven” … where believers live and share in the love and light and truth of God’s Spirit, filled with the love of Jesus, filled to overflowing; filled, to give and share.
Was the church really, ever, this way? If it was, how long did life remain like this, because it’s surely not like this now …
That’s true … but our sin and selfishness today need not make us throw these verses out as “pie in the sky” perfection which we’ll never be able to achieve. They remain as a description of “gateworthy” behavior for us … helping us who follow Jesus be good gatekeepers for his flock … when we see and hear that Word of God in action, faith lived out among people, spoken of, commended … we can open the gates, most surely, and let that Word of abundant life come into our faith communities, and into our hearts.
Don’t let the figures of speech throw you. All you need to know, all you need to hear, all you need to see … is the love of Jesus, lived out, acted out, spoken of, around you. And when you do … open wide the gates of your own heart, to welcome in the Good Shepherd of your soul … and be made ready to share him with others.
Amen.
4 Easter A
John 10:1-10 / Acts 2:44-47 / 1 Peter 2:19-25
15 May 2011
”Jesus used these figures of speech with them ... but they did not understand what he was saying.”
Forget they … we may not understand what Jesus is saying … with all these “figures” before us in today’s Gospel reading:
• Sheepfold
• Gate
• Thief and bandit
• Gatekeeper
• Shepherd
• Sheep
Yes, it’s once again the fourth Sunday in Easter … annually known as “Good Shepherd” Sunday … much beloved by worshippers but received with, well, less than enthusiasm by most preachers I know.
What can one possibly say new and different about sheep, for the seventeenth time in a row, anyway?
But this year’s offering of Gospel text provides us with more than the usual warm fuzziness … while also bringing some treacherous footing for both preacher and hearers.
Jesus is painting a multi-layered, many faceted word picture in these ten short verses of John’s gospel. For concrete thinkers … Biblical literalists … these verses can be nightmarish.
Jesus is a shepherd.
No, no, he’s the gate.
So then, who’s the shepherd? Is Jesus the gatekeeper?
Who are those thieves and bandits?
And what about the sheep?
Baaaaaaa!
Jesus’ words to his disciples here in chapter 10 come right after chapter 9’s drama surrounding the man born blind … if you were in worship on the fourth Sunday in Lent, you heard this story … if not, I recommend chapter 9 to you for reading, a salvation play of several short acts, all contained in one chapter of John’s gospel.
Jesus heals a blind man, and as that man grows in faith, “seeing Jesus” clearer and clearer … those around him … the religious leaders of the day, the crowds, even the man’s parents … they grow increasingly “blind” to God’s truth, God’s reality of goodness, mercy and grace in Jesus, even as he’s standing right before them.
And so, as we continue over into chapter 10, and try to understand the “figures” in which Jesus is speaking … well, if we’ve been paying attention in chapter 9, the answer to one of our questions, “who are those thieves and bandits,” well, Jesus makes this perfectly clear for us.
The thieves and bandits, they are those who, when it comes to matters of faith, stubbornly cling to their own wrong-headed ways … those who feel they must mold and shape God over into their own image of what God is to be like … those who refuse to hear the call of God’s Spirit, through Jesus, to surrender, to lay down their own sin and selfishness … those who must micromanage and control every aspect of faith, God, church, belief, so that it all goes their way, filling their wants, their needs, their desires, their always having to be in the spotlight, in charge, number one, getting their way …
Those are the thieves and bandits, Jesus says. The ones who end up with their pants ripped on the fence, ripped and torn from climbing over, trying to get in, trying to get to the sheep in the wrong way.
Thieves and bandits. Robbers of the pure, sweet word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone, robbing that word from those who would faithfully hear and follow it.
Thieves and bandits.
They will always be in your midst, Jesus says. So pay attention, be on guard, and don’t be afraid to call them as you see them … keep them in their place … keep them from harming the flock.
Keep them from harming the flock. In that story of the man born blind, the religious leaders tried to put a stranglehold on religious faith. The blind man, now healed of his blindness a chapter earlier … his own parents refused to believe him for fear that, if they did, they might be put out of the synagogue. They had Jesus right there before them … and yet, they were blind to the light and truth of God … even as their son, now healed, now under attack by those “thieves and bandits” … even as he, disowned by his parents … he saw clearly.
Jesus saw that his flock … his flock of poor, defenseless sheep-people – they were at risk of being carried off by the thieves and bandits – those who wanted to remove them from the place of faith and hope, peace and new life … and so he started to “speak in figures” to his disciples about this threat .
Through those figures, Jesus puts himself in a few different places in this story.
Yes, he is the shepherd of the sheep – that warm, fuzzy, familiar image we hold dear on Good Shepherd Sunday, as we hear and read and sing the words of the beloved 23rd Psalm, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”
But Jesus also says he is the gate for the sheep.
And a gate … a gate means that there is a fence, too.
Now maybe we don’t like fences. Maybe to us, fences feel un-Christian … fencing off people from people. Fences … such as … you’re saved and you’re not; you’re going to hell, I’m going to heaven; you can come to the table of the Lord, but you can’t ... you can be a pastor in this church, but you can't.
Ah … but this fence … this gate … this is Jesus … not us … nor our human sin getting in the way of relationship between Jesus and us …
… and just as important … please note that the whole point of the fence, the sheepfold, the gate, the shepherd … this is all about the sheep being led out, to follow the shepherd.
The gate … Jesus … is the way the sheep are led out.
So much for warm cuddly fuzziness.
The whole point of having a shepherd, having a gate, having a sheepfold, being sheep … Jesus says … is not that they … we … get to stay in some soft, cushy, protected, “safe” place of comfort … no, but that we are led out by the voice of our shepherd … the voice of God, in Jesus Christ … leads out into the world.
“The sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
And so … just as Jesus placed himself in multiple places in this story … the shepherd, the gate … so there are multiple places for us as well … we who hear Jesus’ call to follow him.
Sometimes … yes … we are the sheep.
And sometimes … we are the gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper … the one who keeps the thieves and bandits from slipping in among the sheep, as they, we, follow Jesus out into the pasture of the world, to work, to proclaim, to serve.
Being a gatekeeper is an important job.
We have seen, and heard, and experienced what happens, when we let thieves and bandits in, to run with the sheep, to take over the flock, and proclaim their hate-filled message of fear and death … falsely stating that they are speaking for the Good Shepherd … when what they really are, are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The Good Shepherd needs good gatekeepers, too.
But how are we supposed to know when to open and close the gate? How do we know what’s “gate-worthy” behavior?
There’s where our two other New Testament readings come in.
There’s our reading from 1st Peter … words that are difficult … for they speak of the place of suffering in walking the way of Jesus.
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”
The Way of the Cross … the way of denying ourselves and living for others … it is not popular … indeed, thieves and bandits will do everything in their power to badmouth self-denial, giving and living to and for others, putting them first without regard for our own reward or place.
And yet … the Way of the Cross is most certainly “gateworthy” behavior for us. When we see it … when we encounter in, through the humble words and actions of those who have heard their Shepherd’s voice, his call to follow him … we can open the gates, open the gates of our hearts, open our arms in love and care for our neighbor, open our hands in loving service for the sake of those who most especially need us to live out the love and abundant life of the Good Shepherd, so they may have it in their hearts as well.
Then there’s our reading from Acts.
These words have taken substantial heat lately because, as some have said, “the liberals are using these words to try to prove to us that Jesus wants us all to be socialists.”
It sure does sound that way.
“All who believed … had all things in common … they would sell their possessions and good and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
But let’s cut to the chase here. Acts is not an instruction manual laying out actions for government programs … nor is the author recommending societal laws, to be mandated and enforced by executive fiat … no, what’s being described here is, the organic behavior of Spirit-led believers … in these verses coming immediately after the Pentecost story, God’s Spirit, having come upon these new Christians … that Spirit, God’s Spirit, is guiding them to give and share, voluntarily, willingly… as the Holy Spirit would lead and guide us, too.
These are verses pointing toward an idyllic community … “on earth as it is in heaven” … where believers live and share in the love and light and truth of God’s Spirit, filled with the love of Jesus, filled to overflowing; filled, to give and share.
Was the church really, ever, this way? If it was, how long did life remain like this, because it’s surely not like this now …
That’s true … but our sin and selfishness today need not make us throw these verses out as “pie in the sky” perfection which we’ll never be able to achieve. They remain as a description of “gateworthy” behavior for us … helping us who follow Jesus be good gatekeepers for his flock … when we see and hear that Word of God in action, faith lived out among people, spoken of, commended … we can open the gates, most surely, and let that Word of abundant life come into our faith communities, and into our hearts.
Don’t let the figures of speech throw you. All you need to know, all you need to hear, all you need to see … is the love of Jesus, lived out, acted out, spoken of, around you. And when you do … open wide the gates of your own heart, to welcome in the Good Shepherd of your soul … and be made ready to share him with others.
Amen.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
8 May 2011
“What feast of love”
Luke 24:13-35
2 Easter A
8 May 2011
“When Jesus was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him …”
As we come to this feast of love this morning, how would Jesus open our eyes, to recognize him, and his presence, for and with us?
Perhaps we come tired. Worn out by the events of the week, family situations, or just a miserable Seattle winter. We feel spent, having given it all we can, running on empty.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us with food for the journey of our lives. In the bread and wine, he says, he promises, “I am with you.” Our Savior who walks alongside us through the tiring, exhausting stuff of this life. Indeed, one who carries us through it when we’re too tired to move.
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
Maybe we don’t feel worthy to be here. Perhaps we’re carrying around baggage … invisible to others around us … but there they are, suitcases full of guilt and shame, guilt over what we’ve done in the past, how we’ve lived our lives in the past … shame over things that happened to us or are still happening, things over which we may have little or no control, but they’re still there, burdening us, weighing us down.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and says, “Here. I’ll take your bags. Come and dine with me, and I will give you a new, fresh start on life. All that was in the past, is past … this is a meal of looking ahead, to what will be, and remember, I am with you always.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
We come with anger. Anger at big, “out there” others which, who we feel are making life miserable for us. Government, presidents, big corporations, politicians. Anger at closer, more personal others … family, parents, friends, boss, co-worker, children. Anger at God … “why did this have to happen to me???”
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and takes our anger. We come, sulking, pouting, withdrawn, detached, yelling and screaming, even pounding and beating, and he’ll take it. And keep on taking it. He’ll show us his nail-scarred hands, and feet, and side, and say, honestly, truthfully, “I know your pain. I took it to the cross with me, so that it would die there. Now let me show you what I and my Father intend for life … for your life … full, rich, abundant. This is a foretaste of the feast to come.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
We come in fear. We have big fears … what is happening in the world around us … our nation, our state, our city or neighborhood? We have closer in fears … which are just as real to us … will I keep my job? What is happening to my family? I don’t feel as well as I used to … is something wrong?
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and says, “I know your fears. I have heard them, and I have lived in them … deeply, most dark. And I want you to know I am most certainly with you in those times of fear and questioning. I keep my promises to you. Here in this meal is a down payment on my promise to never leave you, to always be with you.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
We come from the outside, looking in. We feel separate, apart, not connected, living without meaning and without purpose. Unemployed or underemployed, left behind by an economy that rewards those who have more with still more … and leaves those with less, with even less, even less. Retired and bored, sitting in front of the television day in and day out, alone. In school, not fitting in. In job, doing drudge work for a pittance of pay. In a most populated place, we may feel terribly alone.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and welcomes us and says, “My beloved! I’ve been waiting for you. Your brothers and sisters, also my beloved, are already here. Come and join in this meal of welcome and abundance, without cost, without price. I’ve already paid the bill in full. Come in, take your reserved place, and celebrate with us.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
Or perhaps we come with joy. Life is good for us; we feel God’s presence, God’s abundance and blessings, and we want to celebrate and share with others … especially others who we know, we realize, don’t have it so good in this life.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and feeds us … and then, he takes us aside, and whispers in our ear, “Now here’s what I’d like you to do after you leave my table … there’s a brother or sister over there who needs an uplifting word … there’s a task there among the homeless and downtrodden that needs your participation … there’s a ministry in this congregation of my people that’s just been waiting for someone like you with your gifts and talents to come and take part, to go and serve … GO AND SERVE.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
No matter where we are in this life, from where we’ve come, to where we’re going … in this feast of love, Jesus meets us in all our human conditions, and he gives us exactly what we need.
For this life. And for the life to come.
One size feeds all.
What feast of love, indeed.
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
Amen.
Luke 24:13-35
2 Easter A
8 May 2011
“When Jesus was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him …”
As we come to this feast of love this morning, how would Jesus open our eyes, to recognize him, and his presence, for and with us?
Perhaps we come tired. Worn out by the events of the week, family situations, or just a miserable Seattle winter. We feel spent, having given it all we can, running on empty.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us with food for the journey of our lives. In the bread and wine, he says, he promises, “I am with you.” Our Savior who walks alongside us through the tiring, exhausting stuff of this life. Indeed, one who carries us through it when we’re too tired to move.
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
Maybe we don’t feel worthy to be here. Perhaps we’re carrying around baggage … invisible to others around us … but there they are, suitcases full of guilt and shame, guilt over what we’ve done in the past, how we’ve lived our lives in the past … shame over things that happened to us or are still happening, things over which we may have little or no control, but they’re still there, burdening us, weighing us down.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and says, “Here. I’ll take your bags. Come and dine with me, and I will give you a new, fresh start on life. All that was in the past, is past … this is a meal of looking ahead, to what will be, and remember, I am with you always.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
We come with anger. Anger at big, “out there” others which, who we feel are making life miserable for us. Government, presidents, big corporations, politicians. Anger at closer, more personal others … family, parents, friends, boss, co-worker, children. Anger at God … “why did this have to happen to me???”
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and takes our anger. We come, sulking, pouting, withdrawn, detached, yelling and screaming, even pounding and beating, and he’ll take it. And keep on taking it. He’ll show us his nail-scarred hands, and feet, and side, and say, honestly, truthfully, “I know your pain. I took it to the cross with me, so that it would die there. Now let me show you what I and my Father intend for life … for your life … full, rich, abundant. This is a foretaste of the feast to come.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
We come in fear. We have big fears … what is happening in the world around us … our nation, our state, our city or neighborhood? We have closer in fears … which are just as real to us … will I keep my job? What is happening to my family? I don’t feel as well as I used to … is something wrong?
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and says, “I know your fears. I have heard them, and I have lived in them … deeply, most dark. And I want you to know I am most certainly with you in those times of fear and questioning. I keep my promises to you. Here in this meal is a down payment on my promise to never leave you, to always be with you.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
We come from the outside, looking in. We feel separate, apart, not connected, living without meaning and without purpose. Unemployed or underemployed, left behind by an economy that rewards those who have more with still more … and leaves those with less, with even less, even less. Retired and bored, sitting in front of the television day in and day out, alone. In school, not fitting in. In job, doing drudge work for a pittance of pay. In a most populated place, we may feel terribly alone.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and welcomes us and says, “My beloved! I’ve been waiting for you. Your brothers and sisters, also my beloved, are already here. Come and join in this meal of welcome and abundance, without cost, without price. I’ve already paid the bill in full. Come in, take your reserved place, and celebrate with us.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
Or perhaps we come with joy. Life is good for us; we feel God’s presence, God’s abundance and blessings, and we want to celebrate and share with others … especially others who we know, we realize, don’t have it so good in this life.
So here, in this feast of love, Jesus meets us and feeds us … and then, he takes us aside, and whispers in our ear, “Now here’s what I’d like you to do after you leave my table … there’s a brother or sister over there who needs an uplifting word … there’s a task there among the homeless and downtrodden that needs your participation … there’s a ministry in this congregation of my people that’s just been waiting for someone like you with your gifts and talents to come and take part, to go and serve … GO AND SERVE.”
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
No matter where we are in this life, from where we’ve come, to where we’re going … in this feast of love, Jesus meets us in all our human conditions, and he gives us exactly what we need.
For this life. And for the life to come.
One size feeds all.
What feast of love, indeed.
Here he is. Come and eat and drink.
Amen.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
1 May 2011
“Love among the ruins”
John 20:19-31 / 1 Peter 1:3-9
2 Easter A
1 May 2011
Though the calendar says it’s the Second Sunday of Easter … our Gospel texts for this and next week remain on the Day of Jesus’ Resurrection itself.
It’s such a monumental event … THE reason for the Church, that We Are the Church, after all … Jesus is risen! …
… it’s such a monumental event, that it takes a few weeks for the weight of what has happened to sink in. We need to hear the story, again and again, told and retold to us … so that, in and through the telling, as John says at the end of today’s text, “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
Part of that “again and again” means that today we have our annual reading of the story of Thomas, the story labeled forever as “doubting Thomas,” and sermons and messages repeated ad nauseum on one of two themes …
… berating Thomas for his “doubting,” or
… inviting hearers of this story to live in, and be comfortable with, their “doubts” about the faith.
There’s just one problem with both those interpretations.
Nowhere in this text does Jesus use the word “doubt.”
The words are pistis and apistis … pisteo being the Greek verb for “to believe” … so the similar dichotomy in our English would be, to use another word, like that between “moral” and “amoral.” Literally, “having faith” and “without faith.”
So Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not become unbelieving, but believing.”
But I think we like to use that word “doubt” because it reflects our natural position of having a theology of scarcity … there’s just not enough to go around …
… enough of what, you may ask?
Enough of … anything.
Money. Land. Gasoline. Health care. Parking spaces. Easter candy.
And faith.
If I could just have more faith, and less doubt, things would be all better.
Better for Thomas.
And better for us.
Yeah, that’s it. More faith.
But what this old chestnut of a story is really saying to and for us, is that this whole concept of “more faith” is a total crock.
Thomas either has faith, or he doesn’t.
We either have faith, or we don’t.
A vacuum is only a vacuum while it is totally devoid of everything. Once one little molecule of air is introduced into the vacuum, it’s not a vacuum any more.
And so it is with faith.
This is why in Luke’s gospel, when the disciples say “Increase our faith,” Jesus replies, “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
We have enough. Enough money, enough food, … and enough faith.
The theology of scarcity is nothing more than the voice of death, once more, come calling.
And since death met its death on the cross … all there is left for us is faith … hope … love … and life.
And so … to address those who decry “doubting Thomas and his doubts” … since questioning faith necessarily means that there is faith there any way … not a vacuum … then, questioning faith (not doubt, please … just send that death-and-scarcity word right out of our faith-vocabulary forever) … questioning faith isn’t going to harm faith one bit.
Indeed … questioning … testing … tempering faith … can only serve to strengthen it.
And so, with faith, as it is in so many other things we humans abuse, the problem isn’t in the acquiring … it’s in the application.
And that takes us to the often-forgotten first part of this Gospel text … what happens on the evening of Resurrection … when Jesus appears to every other disciple except Thomas … as they’re locked away in fear … shut away for safety … there, among the ruins of all that their lives with Jesus had been … the really dead Jesus, now really raised from the dead Jesus appears personally to them and says “Peace be with you.”
This is, of course, directly connected with the words which come after … and their popular interpretation. If the whole business about Thomas is a story about doubt … don’t doubt, have more faith, more faith to believe more …then, this part of the story, these words, will show us the result of having that more.
Jesus sends those who really, truly believe … he sends them, us … peace.
“Peace be with you.”
There’s just one thing with this peace.
It’s not very peaceful.
Indeed, it’s unsettling.
First, it comes with a directive, to be messengers of the Gospel of forgiveness. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Second, it comes with a charge … “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
If you sifted through everything that hacked Jesus’ opponents off about him … everything Jesus did that got him into trouble … what would be the One Thing that was at the root of it all?
Associating with people on the outside? Performing miracles? Raising the dead?
Well, those were all part of it.
But there was one overarching theme … through everything that he did … that most rubbed people the wrong way, about him.
Jesus claimed to be God.
And how did he do this?
He forgave people their sins.
Why, only God can forgive sins … that’s what the religious folks of Jesus’ day said. How can this man do what only God can do?
Exactly. Except, of course, they didn’t realize that this man was, is, also God.
And so here, when Jesus gives the disciples “peace,” and then sends them out to forgive sins in his name … well, this is no “serenity now” … no “every day in every way, it’s getting better and better.”
And certainly it’s no “just have more faith, more faith, more and more and more faith, and you can do more, believe more, work more for Jesus than if you had less faith … and more and more stuff’s going to go right for you, go your way, then, too. God’s material blessings will shower down upon you … just don’t doubt, but have more faith, have more faith.”
Again, that’s a total crock.
Jesus sends peace all right … but it’s peace that will be most unsettling.
It is peace through the sign of the cross … the sign of truth, the sign of God’s justice, the sign of It All Stops Here, folks … the phoniness, the lies … the theology of scarcity … the endless cries for “more.”
It. All. Stops. Here.
Our reading from 1st Peter … one of the last of the Scriptures to be added to the canon of the Bible … coming somewhere around a hundred years after the words of John’s gospel were written … they point out the reality of what following Jesus meant then … his peace, most unsettling …
In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.
Those to whom this letter initially came, living a hundred years after Jesus’ death and resurrection … none of them had seen Jesus in person … they were well past the events of his life and suffering, death and being raised. But they, also sent in his Spirit, sent in his peace, sent in faith … not more or less, just Sent In Faith … they believed, too, despite the trials and sufferings they were beginning to feel as Christianity became an underground, criminal, persecuted religion in the Roman Empire … they believed, and were sent, to bring the word of forgiveness and peace to people of their place and time …
… leading to generation upon generation, so that this word of peace and forgiveness would come even to us, even to us …
And it is still a disquieting peace. Not a nice peace. But a peace which acknowledges that humans sin, and everything that we humans do … build … assemble … put together … governments, schools, corporations, and yes, the church … all are full of sin … the cry for “more” … and all of us, each and every one of us, we are still and most certainly in need of the word of forgiveness and new life.
Our book group is reading the new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We just finished the section which included his sermon to a group of theological students and pastors at Fano, Denmark in 1934. Though his situation was different than ours … facing the Nazi threat where state would take the place of God … his words in that sermon about peace, the peace Jesus brings, still ring true for us today ... especially on this Sunday, with this text before us:
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying down the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.
That is the peace Jesus gave to the disciples gathered there that day.
And this is also at the heart of the question Jesus asked of Thomas, that first Sunday after the Resurrection.
“Do you want more … or do you want me?”
With peace, there is no “safety.” With faith, there is no more.
It’s all about Jesus. His cross, his life, his death, his resurrection.
All for the sake of the world. All for us.
No More and No Less.
His call, to all of us, his claim, on each of us, is for All of Us.
… that we may have life, in his name.
Enough faith. Enough life.
And enough … to share.
…so that they may have life, in his name, too.
Amen.
John 20:19-31 / 1 Peter 1:3-9
2 Easter A
1 May 2011
Though the calendar says it’s the Second Sunday of Easter … our Gospel texts for this and next week remain on the Day of Jesus’ Resurrection itself.
It’s such a monumental event … THE reason for the Church, that We Are the Church, after all … Jesus is risen! …
… it’s such a monumental event, that it takes a few weeks for the weight of what has happened to sink in. We need to hear the story, again and again, told and retold to us … so that, in and through the telling, as John says at the end of today’s text, “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
Part of that “again and again” means that today we have our annual reading of the story of Thomas, the story labeled forever as “doubting Thomas,” and sermons and messages repeated ad nauseum on one of two themes …
… berating Thomas for his “doubting,” or
… inviting hearers of this story to live in, and be comfortable with, their “doubts” about the faith.
There’s just one problem with both those interpretations.
Nowhere in this text does Jesus use the word “doubt.”
The words are pistis and apistis … pisteo being the Greek verb for “to believe” … so the similar dichotomy in our English would be, to use another word, like that between “moral” and “amoral.” Literally, “having faith” and “without faith.”
So Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not become unbelieving, but believing.”
But I think we like to use that word “doubt” because it reflects our natural position of having a theology of scarcity … there’s just not enough to go around …
… enough of what, you may ask?
Enough of … anything.
Money. Land. Gasoline. Health care. Parking spaces. Easter candy.
And faith.
If I could just have more faith, and less doubt, things would be all better.
Better for Thomas.
And better for us.
Yeah, that’s it. More faith.
But what this old chestnut of a story is really saying to and for us, is that this whole concept of “more faith” is a total crock.
Thomas either has faith, or he doesn’t.
We either have faith, or we don’t.
A vacuum is only a vacuum while it is totally devoid of everything. Once one little molecule of air is introduced into the vacuum, it’s not a vacuum any more.
And so it is with faith.
This is why in Luke’s gospel, when the disciples say “Increase our faith,” Jesus replies, “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
We have enough. Enough money, enough food, … and enough faith.
The theology of scarcity is nothing more than the voice of death, once more, come calling.
And since death met its death on the cross … all there is left for us is faith … hope … love … and life.
And so … to address those who decry “doubting Thomas and his doubts” … since questioning faith necessarily means that there is faith there any way … not a vacuum … then, questioning faith (not doubt, please … just send that death-and-scarcity word right out of our faith-vocabulary forever) … questioning faith isn’t going to harm faith one bit.
Indeed … questioning … testing … tempering faith … can only serve to strengthen it.
And so, with faith, as it is in so many other things we humans abuse, the problem isn’t in the acquiring … it’s in the application.
And that takes us to the often-forgotten first part of this Gospel text … what happens on the evening of Resurrection … when Jesus appears to every other disciple except Thomas … as they’re locked away in fear … shut away for safety … there, among the ruins of all that their lives with Jesus had been … the really dead Jesus, now really raised from the dead Jesus appears personally to them and says “Peace be with you.”
This is, of course, directly connected with the words which come after … and their popular interpretation. If the whole business about Thomas is a story about doubt … don’t doubt, have more faith, more faith to believe more …then, this part of the story, these words, will show us the result of having that more.
Jesus sends those who really, truly believe … he sends them, us … peace.
“Peace be with you.”
There’s just one thing with this peace.
It’s not very peaceful.
Indeed, it’s unsettling.
First, it comes with a directive, to be messengers of the Gospel of forgiveness. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Second, it comes with a charge … “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
If you sifted through everything that hacked Jesus’ opponents off about him … everything Jesus did that got him into trouble … what would be the One Thing that was at the root of it all?
Associating with people on the outside? Performing miracles? Raising the dead?
Well, those were all part of it.
But there was one overarching theme … through everything that he did … that most rubbed people the wrong way, about him.
Jesus claimed to be God.
And how did he do this?
He forgave people their sins.
Why, only God can forgive sins … that’s what the religious folks of Jesus’ day said. How can this man do what only God can do?
Exactly. Except, of course, they didn’t realize that this man was, is, also God.
And so here, when Jesus gives the disciples “peace,” and then sends them out to forgive sins in his name … well, this is no “serenity now” … no “every day in every way, it’s getting better and better.”
And certainly it’s no “just have more faith, more faith, more and more and more faith, and you can do more, believe more, work more for Jesus than if you had less faith … and more and more stuff’s going to go right for you, go your way, then, too. God’s material blessings will shower down upon you … just don’t doubt, but have more faith, have more faith.”
Again, that’s a total crock.
Jesus sends peace all right … but it’s peace that will be most unsettling.
It is peace through the sign of the cross … the sign of truth, the sign of God’s justice, the sign of It All Stops Here, folks … the phoniness, the lies … the theology of scarcity … the endless cries for “more.”
It. All. Stops. Here.
Our reading from 1st Peter … one of the last of the Scriptures to be added to the canon of the Bible … coming somewhere around a hundred years after the words of John’s gospel were written … they point out the reality of what following Jesus meant then … his peace, most unsettling …
In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.
Those to whom this letter initially came, living a hundred years after Jesus’ death and resurrection … none of them had seen Jesus in person … they were well past the events of his life and suffering, death and being raised. But they, also sent in his Spirit, sent in his peace, sent in faith … not more or less, just Sent In Faith … they believed, too, despite the trials and sufferings they were beginning to feel as Christianity became an underground, criminal, persecuted religion in the Roman Empire … they believed, and were sent, to bring the word of forgiveness and peace to people of their place and time …
… leading to generation upon generation, so that this word of peace and forgiveness would come even to us, even to us …
And it is still a disquieting peace. Not a nice peace. But a peace which acknowledges that humans sin, and everything that we humans do … build … assemble … put together … governments, schools, corporations, and yes, the church … all are full of sin … the cry for “more” … and all of us, each and every one of us, we are still and most certainly in need of the word of forgiveness and new life.
Our book group is reading the new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We just finished the section which included his sermon to a group of theological students and pastors at Fano, Denmark in 1934. Though his situation was different than ours … facing the Nazi threat where state would take the place of God … his words in that sermon about peace, the peace Jesus brings, still ring true for us today ... especially on this Sunday, with this text before us:
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying down the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.
That is the peace Jesus gave to the disciples gathered there that day.
And this is also at the heart of the question Jesus asked of Thomas, that first Sunday after the Resurrection.
“Do you want more … or do you want me?”
With peace, there is no “safety.” With faith, there is no more.
It’s all about Jesus. His cross, his life, his death, his resurrection.
All for the sake of the world. All for us.
No More and No Less.
His call, to all of us, his claim, on each of us, is for All of Us.
… that we may have life, in his name.
Enough faith. Enough life.
And enough … to share.
…so that they may have life, in his name, too.
Amen.
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